.

my love with the raspy breath of sleep
  rolls herself up in the blankets
like a caterpillar building its cocoon
  -snipping each bedsheet off me
like a new leaf from the stalk
  until I am left as a shivering bare branch

and she shows her affection by gnawing dents
  along the lines of my fingertips
felling them to drag back to her dam,
  no doubt

and like a surly crow-time crow she squawks no
  when I ask her to wed me
-although she's game as a doe when I ask her to bed me

and I pine constantly
  for the lithe twisting of her trunk
and the tangled twirls of her crown
  falling over her cheeks in unkempt curls

-such delights I won't trade
  for a thing in the world.